Joanne's professional music career began in Sydney as an orchestral musician. With a desire to propel the bassoon beyond the orchestra, Joanne moved to Melbourne to study Jazz and Improvisation at the Victorian College of Arts where she completed a Masters degree in performance. Joanne has developed a number of spectacular augmented digital bassoons including the Serpentine-bassoon and the Contra-monster.

Her work in this field has received National and International recognition including winning the Karl Szucka Preis, IAWM New Genre Prize and Bourges Prize for Electroacoustic music. Joanne has recorded and premiered new works for Bassoon and has her own compositional work represented by the international Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel Switzerland.